Attending ex-girlfriend's wedding, arresting the groom's officer on the spot

At the same time, Zhang Hui led another team to investigate the shantytown where Zhao Jianguo once lived. In the narrow alley, the clothes on the clothesline rustled in the wind, and the air was filled with a musty smell.

"Sister, do you know Zhao Jianguo? He used to live in this area." Zhang Hui stopped a middle-aged woman carrying a basket of vegetables.

"I know him, the honest man who always hunches over." The woman stopped and said, "He doesn't talk much. He just nods and smiles when he sees people. He helped me change the light bulb in my house when it was broken."

"Does he have any special friends? Or has he done anything unusual recently?"

The woman thought for a while and said, "I don't see him having any particularly close friends. He keeps to himself. But a while ago, a man driving a luxury car came to see him a few times. He was dressed very elegantly and looked out of place standing next to Jianguo. I asked Jianguo who that was, and he hemmed and hawed and said he was a distant relative from his hometown."

Zhang Hui's eyes lit up, and he quickly asked, "Do you remember what that person looked like? When did he come?"

"As for his appearance, I remember he was wearing sunglasses and looked fierce. As for the time, it seemed to be half a month ago. During those days, Jianguo was always absent-minded and didn't even greet people when he met them."

In the next three days, the two teams visited and investigated non-stop. They interviewed all of Zhao Jianguo's colleagues at the steel plant, looked through his call records and social media accounts, and even checked the small restaurants and vegetable markets he frequented. However, the information they obtained was similar: Zhao Jianguo was an honest and decent person who never made enemies with others. He had a simple social circle and spent his time at home except for work.

"Captain Wang, we've visited hundreds of people in the past three days and checked Zhao Jianguo's interpersonal relationships thoroughly, but we still don't have any useful clues." Team member Xiao Lin rubbed his red eyes, looking tired.

Wang Shuai sat in the police car, looking out the window at the gray sky, frowning. The notebook was densely filled with various information, but none of them could point to the murderer. Zhao Jianguo's honest character made the case deadlocked. There was no motive for revenge, no economic dispute, so why did the murderer kill him so cruelly?

After returning to the police station, the two groups met for a short meeting. Zhang Hui flipped through the thick investigation records and said helplessly: "The mysterious man driving the luxury car asked everyone in the shantytown, but they only knew this information. There were no strange numbers in Zhao Jianguo's call records."

"Except for Li Qiang, no one else at the steel mill found anything wrong. But Li Qiang has been out of town for the past three years, so he has sufficient proof of his absence." Wang Shuai pinched his brows, "Zhao Jianguo is usually so low-key, what on earth caused him to get into trouble?"

The conference room fell into silence, with only the ticking of the wall clock. Lu Chuan stood in front of the whiteboard, looking at the photo of Zhao Jianguo and the dense network of relationships on it, picked up the red pen and circled Li Qiang's name. Although there is no evidence to prove that he is related to the case, his intuition tells him that this fired security captain may be the key figure to open a breakthrough in the case. "Keep watching Li Qiang, especially his intersection with Zhao Jianguo." Lu Chuan put down his pen and scanned everyone with a firm gaze, "The murderer can't appear out of thin air, he must be hidden in these details that we have overlooked. Everyone, work harder and re-sort out all the clues, and don't miss any possibility!"

The rain was still falling outside the window, and the criminal investigation team members were engaged in a new round of investigation. In the face of this mysterious case, they knew that only by unraveling the mystery and leaving no clues behind could the truth be revealed to the world and the deceased be given an explanation.

The investigation into Li Qiang is in full swing.

Wang Shuai slapped Li Qiang's photo on the whiteboard. The man in the photo was wearing sunglasses and had a raised mouth, which overlapped with the hunched figure stealthily carrying scrap metal in the steel plant's surveillance camera. "Keep a close eye on this person." He drew arrows around the word "Li Qiang" with a red pen, "Check all his cash flows in the past five years, visit everyone he has come into contact with, and his whereabouts in the week of the crime must be accurate to the minute."

The financial investigation team was the first to discover the anomaly. In the past three years, Li Qiang's bank card has frequently seen unknown transfers, ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands, and all the transferors are anonymous accounts. "This money is very strange." The technician checked the transaction details, "Each transfer was in the early morning, and the amount was even decimal, like '8888.66' or '16666.99', which is completely inconsistent with normal transaction habits." What's more suspicious is that he suddenly bought a second-hand SUV worth yuan in full six months ago, and the flow of the scrap recycling station could not support this expense at all.

The field team uncovered a bigger secret in Li Qiang's hometown. In the dilapidated ancestral house, boxes of high-end cigarettes and alcohol were piled in the corner, and the packaging was stained with the steel plant's unique yellow anti-rust oil. "These goods look like things from the factory warehouse." The team member held up the bottle of wine to the light, "The production date and batch number can match the steel plant's purchase records." And in the secret compartment under the bed, they found a stack of yellowed IOUs, and the borrower's name was Zhao Jianguo - the earliest one was signed after the burn accident in 2019, with amounts ranging from 2020 to , and the latest IOU date was on the eve of the Spring Festival.

"Zhao Jianguo didn't go back to his hometown at all, but to avoid debt." Wang Shuai stroked the crooked handwriting on the IOU and suddenly remembered the words of the old steel plant worker. They immediately retrieved the surveillance footage of Hongyuan Steel Plant. In the early morning of January 2020, 1, the footage showed Li Qiang driving a pickup truck blocking the downstairs of the employee dormitory. Zhao Jianguo hurriedly got into the car with a woven bag on his back, looking so panicked that he almost hit the lamp post.

But during the investigation of the critical time period of the crime, Li Qiang had a perfect alibi. The gas station surveillance showed that he was refueling his truck in a neighboring city in the evening of August 8, and the convenience store cashier receipt was accurate to 12:18; the highway ETC record showed that he was delivering goods in the provincial capital 23 kilometers away that night. "It is impossible for him to kill and dump bodies across three prefecture-level cities in two hours." Yang Sen spread the driving route map all over the table, and the red track line was winding on the map like a snake, "Unless." He suddenly zoomed in on a surveillance screenshot of a service area. In the picture, Li Qiang's truck drove in at three in the morning, but drove out from the exit in the opposite direction five minutes later.

"Check who he has contacted in the service area!" Wang Shuai slammed the table. The technical department compared the surveillance overnight and found that an unlicensed van frequently entered and exited the service area during the same period. What was even more suspicious was that the weight of the van when it drove out was nearly 150 kilograms more than when it drove in - exactly the weight of an adult male. When the van was tracked and disappeared on the county road only 20 kilometers away from the cornfield of Qinggang Village, everyone held their breath.

However, just when the investigation was about to make a breakthrough, the clues were suddenly interrupted. (End of this chapter)